


He

by morganya



Category: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-11-23
Updated: 2004-11-23
Packaged: 2017-10-10 13:10:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/morganya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What was, almost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://atlantis-water.livejournal.com/profile)[**atlantis_water**](http://atlantis-water.livejournal.com/), for the beta/cleanup job and letting me yoink her [](http://community.livejournal.com/qeplot/profile)[**qeplot**](http://community.livejournal.com/qeplot/) challenge.

  
Note: Thanks to [](http://atlantis-water.livejournal.com/profile)[**atlantis_water**](http://atlantis-water.livejournal.com/), for the beta/cleanup job and letting me yoink her [](http://community.livejournal.com/qeplot/profile)[**qeplot**](http://community.livejournal.com/qeplot/) challenge.  
Ted drank coffee black, bitter, scalding hot. Dark roast beans that he ground himself and poured into a silver travel mug, and nothing else would do; he was suspicious of Starbucks, looked at Krispy Kreme with horror. Thom didn't know if it was because he actually liked it or not. Thom used to try to tempt him with the drinks he liked, towering, fancy concoctions filled with chocolate syrup and sugar and spice-flecked whipped cream, but that only made Ted laugh and say, "I'd rather not go into a diabetic coma just now, thanks."

They used to drive around Kew Gardens on the weekends, or whenever there was a spare moment, circling around on the Van Wyck Expressway while Ted tried to remember who had written that poem about the other Kew Gardens, the one in England, but all he could come up with was that it had been someone with initials. This was before Ted's boyfriend came out to New York to join him, when Thom would call to check in and find Ted sounding stressed out and lonely. Thom became a chauffeur as a distraction technique.

"What do you feel like doing tonight?" Thom said whenever the conversation lagged.

Ted said without missing a beat, "I don't know, Ange. What do _you_ feel like doing?"

They spoke to each other in a kind of verbal shorthand, based on jokes they'd heard or movies they'd seen. What they were going to do for the next straight guy. Favorite hotels and airlines. The weather. Other things, they avoided mentioning.

"You remember like in Goodfellas?" Thom said. "Where no one ever really says anything but everyone knows what everyone else means?"

"Because they're being taped or something," Ted said. "Bugged. Yeah."

"Runnin' from the law," Thom said, turning right on Metropolitan.

Thom thought that they had an awful lot of shorthand to fall back on, and he liked reassuring himself that Ted knew the same things he knew, even when he needed prompting at times.

"Ted," Thom said, "Ted, do you remember -"

"Careful," Ted said sharply, as someone in a silver Miata honked their horn and came within inches of sideswiping the car because Thom hadn't been paying attention. Ted put out his hand, the one not holding his coffee, his hand on Thom's arm like he could stop him from going through the windshield. Thom spun the wheel, getting them out of harm's way. Ted was still touching him, the wedding ring on his hand glinting in the light. "Careful, careful," Ted repeated, softer.

*****

Thom liked parties. Ted told him it was because he got a charge out of playing the pater familas, keeping everyone he knew within eyeshot, but Thom wasn't sure how true that was.

He brought them all out to the house on the slightest pretext, coworkers and ex-coworkers and friends and friends of friends and anyone else who the friends and coworkers decided to bring along. Food everywhere. Booze everywhere. He usually tried to make it last through the weekend, with people coming in and out at all hours, until it was hard to tell where the borders of the house began and ended. He liked feeling that there weren't any limits.

So it was at that point in the weekend when half of the guests had gone home, and the rest of them were safely ensconced upstairs. The only real thing Thom could do was go about picking up the mess left behind. He couldn't really do much about it at this stage, other than try to gather the dirty plates together and empty the ashtrays; anyway, everything would be clearer in the morning.

Ted was still in the living room, sitting on the couch and playing Tug with Paco. Ted was leaning back, pulling at the end of the old gray sweatsock Thom hadn't the heart to take away from the dog, and Paco was wagging his tail and pulling back, jaws clamped around the sock and tearing more holes in it. Thom stood in the doorway and waited until Ted had let Paco win, letting the sock drop limply from his hand, and Paco had paced around in triumph and then sat hopefully by Ted's feet in case he wanted to play again. Thom said, "Can't believe you actually touched that thing. You're going to regret it."

"I already am. What're you doin'? Can I help?"

"Not after you touched the staphylococcus sock. I'm fine." Thom emptied an ashtray into the wastebasket in one sweeping motion. "Where's he gone off to?"

"Upstairs," Ted said. "He hasn't gotten used to these tests of endurance you call parties." He scratched the top of Paco's head. Paco thumped his leg on the floor.

Ted said, "My husband," when he was talking to other gay guys, or when he was trying to make a quiet point in interviews. He said, "My partner," when he was talking to fairly-liberal-but-otherwise-politically-unknown interviewers, and sometimes he just said, "My boyfriend," but that wasn't very often. Thom said, "He," or "Ted's boyfriend," but usually that was only to himself.

"You're slacking on the cleanup detail, Filicia," Ted said.

"Hmm?" Thom said. He belatedly put the ashtray down. "What?"

"Slackin'," Ted repeated. He grinned. "Sure you don't want help?"

"Nah, I'm good." Thom turned away from the couch. Paco, getting bored with having his ears skritched, came over and circled around Thom's legs.

"Suit yourself," Ted said. He leaned forward, playing with the scattered magazines on the coffee table. Thom picked up a discarded wineglass.

In the kitchen, Thom piled everything into the dishwasher before realizing that half of it was the good china, the kind that broke if you looked at it funny, and he began mechanically sorting through, trying to pay attention. Ted whistled tunelessly to himself out in the living room.

Ted's boyfriend was about Thom's age, maybe a year or two younger. At parties, he and Ted moved in what appeared to be separate orbits at first, only occasionally coming into contact with each other. When their paths crossed, Ted would touch the small of the boyfriend's back, or rest his wrist lightly on his shoulder, the gesture both protective and proud. You'd miss it if you weren't looking, it was always quick. But it happened every time.

Thom knocked the dishwasher closed with his knee. Ted had stopped whistling.

When Thom came out of the kitchen, Ted was still on the couch. He'd grabbed a stray napkin from the coffee table and started doodling on it, something that looked like little stars. Paco wandered over and made sure Thom was still there, nudging his hand with his head before going across the room to the dogbed.

"Aren't you supposed to be in bed by now?" Thom asked. "He must be getting lonely up there."

"He's used to my insomnia," Ted said. "I can go up now, if you'd rather -"

"No, it's okay," Thom said. "I just think you need all the beauty sleep you can get. Not sure if it'll work, though."

"So many insults, so little time, Thom." Ted drew a line around two of the stars, transforming them into part of a face: crooked five-pointed eyes stared out of the paper. "Apparently I kick in my sleep, too. It's not easy sharing a bed with me."

"Oh?" Thom said. He looked at Ted's hands, index finger draped over the pen, almost touching the tip. "You know, for an old guy, Ted, you write like a kindergartner."

Ted stopped doodling. He looked up, eyes darkening with what looked like genuine hurt, and Thom said quickly, feeling bad, "Look, Ted. Can I see that?" He put out his hand.

Ted eyed him suspiciously but passed over the pen. Thom said, "See?"

Thom started to reach for the napkin, but it was covered in marks and hard to find a clean space to use, so he settled for using the back of his hand, writing 'Ted' in blue-black ink, like he was giving himself a temporary tattoo. The word came out off-center, the D a little higher than the E, but otherwise it looked all right. The ballpoint rolled across Thom's skin, and it was difficult to make Ted's name come out clearly. "See?" Thom said. "That looks much better."

"It'd look even better if you could write in a straight line. Or is that like a design element?"

"Design element." Thom laughed. "But _I_ write like a grownup. Look."

"Give me that, you," Ted said, grinning. He took the pen back and wrote his name just above where Thom had written it. Thom looked at the back of his hand, at his own cramped, curlycued marks and Ted's large block letters, where the crossbar of the T didn't quite meet the vertical line.

"What's that thing where you, like, try to analyze people by looking at their writing?" Thom said. "You make them write their grocery list and then you know everything about them."

"Graphology," Ted said. He took Thom's hand and studied the names. His hands were warm and dry. "I don't think mine's so bad, Thom. You have barely legible writing, you know?"

"Yeah, but I don't write for a living, honey. You do. Did. That's why it's so strange."

"Humph," Ted said. He wrote his name down again, scowling with concentration, holding Thom's hand steady. He paused in the middle of finishing the D. "Aren't you worried about ink poisoning?"

"Only if you're planning to write _War and Peace_ on me," Thom said. "Actually, Ted, I've got a dentist appointment on Monday. Think you could write that down so I don't forget?"

"I thought you could afford a secretary," Ted said, but wrote the word 'dentist' on Thom's ring finger, the S on top of the second knuckle. "Should I write the time down too, or can you remember that?"

"Um, I'd tell you, but I can't remember when it was."

"Flake," Ted said. Chuckling, he wrote the word 'flake' in the crescent between Thom's thumb and index finger. He retraced the letters when the ink went recalcitrant.

"Not so hard," Thom said. He batted his eyelashes. "Ah'm delicate."

"Tell me another one," Ted said. He started to put the pen down.

"I didn't say stop," Thom said.

He was sitting with his leg pressed against Ted's, knees almost touching. The dog was across the room, curled up in his little bed, the dirty sock caught between his paws. Ted's ring glowed silver in the light.

"He's upstairs," Ted said.

"He's probably asleep by now."

"Would -" Ted dropped his hand. He started to get up. "It's late. I have to go to bed."

"You're not going to sleep," Thom said.

"No. But I have to go to bed." Ted stood. The pen dropped from his hand, rolling under the couch. "Dammit. Sorry."

"Ted -"

"Good night," Ted said faintly. He disappeared, quick and silent, and if he looked back Thom didn't know it.

Thom sat on the couch and looked at the backs of his hands, one covered in large block print, the other one plain and pale, blue veins visible under the skin.

*****

At work, they said nothing in particular. On the third day, Thom took Martin to the kitchen to show him the new refrigerator and the dishwasher that actually worked now; Ted was in there cutting up pears and apples for the fruit salsa, not looking up as Thom kept chattering and the cameras kept rolling.

Thom was just explaining how the layout had changed, his automatic designer mode that worked very well when he was trying to keep from thinking; Martin was in the middle of interrupting when Ted stopped chopping and said something that sounded like, "Ahhh," more an expression of irritation than pain, really, and brought his arm up. There was a white flap of skin on the pad of his left index finger, a tiny widening mouth, and then blood was running down the back of Ted's hand and onto his wrist and Martin's face had gone a strange chalky color, grabbing onto Thom's shoulder like he was going to fall.

"It's all right," Ted said. He stared at his hand distantly, at the blood pooling in between his fingers. "It's all right. I got distracted."

"I'm gonna -" Martin said. He fled from the kitchen.

"Is he okay?" Ted said.

Thom said, "Are _you_ okay?"

Ted stared at him. For an awful moment Thom was scared he might laugh. "You'll cut this, right?" Ted said in the general direction of the cameras.

"Do you need anything?" Thom said. Something had gone heavy and sick at the pit of his stomach, and he wasn't sure why. "Can I do anything for you?"

Ted looked at him quietly. He was still holding the knife in his other hand, bright shiny silver blade. His shirt cuff was edged with blood. "I'll handle it on my own, I think."

*****

These days, Thom drives up and down the expressway when he has a spare moment. He buys coffee from road stops and gas stations; he keeps them in the cup holder, those innocent little Styrofoam cups the color of milk. He drinks them black and searing hot, swallowing without tasting, hoping that the heat will work to cauterize something inside him, burning through the nerve endings until he can't feel anything at all.


End file.
